Road derailer good for a little gravel?

[Bernard Duhon]

 Do any of you folks have experience using rough phrases like a  Shimano 10% OR Ultegra For relatively tame gravel riding forest roads, things like that?

 Do they work okay?

 Or do I need something with a strong clutch

[Bill Lindsay]

"experience using rough phrases like a  Shimano 10%"

I'm pretty sure 10% is a mistype of 105, but I don't know what "rough phrases" means or if it's an auto-correct thing.  Whatever the wording, lots of people use road derailleurs on gravel, and they work as well as the set up allows and as well as the rider can work them.  

Bill Lindsay

El Cerrito, CA

[Shannon Menkveld]

I remember pro MTB racers using Dura Ace rear derailleurs back in the late 80's /  early 90s. Lighter, a bit more ground clearance, and those guys were strong enough to never need more than a 1:1 gear, so why not? Suntour's whole "MicroDrive" thing was basically the same idea, just marketed differently. (Those derailleurs were awesome.)

So far as I know, clutched derailleurs exist to resist chain slap and dropped chains on 1x drivetrains in rough terrain. Multiple chainrings don't require this, as the front derailleur keeps the chain on the ring.

 

Assuming shifter / derailleur compatibility, I can't think of a reason that it wouldn't work.

--Shannon

[George Rosselle]

I am currently running an 8 speed Shimano 105 short cage derailleur on a 12/26 cassette with a 22/32/42 crankset on a '94 Stumpjumper and it works quite well. Nice tight range, no chain slap that I can hear, and no issues shifting. 

[Patrick Moore]

Tame gravel riding? I’ve been using road derailleurs on dirt for years and they work fine. Currently a Dura Ace 7402 which shifts my 10 cogs just fine.

Long ago I used a short cage 8-sp Ultegra on a Specialized Stumpjumper Team; with the longer mtb derailleur hanger it shifted a 7 sp 14-32 cassette just fine unless it got mucked up by a lot of sand; even then it still worked, it just grumbled when shifting to the 32.

Really, the best shifting I ever had on my dirt road Fargo was using a short cage 9-speed Microshift rd; better than the 7402, tho’ it’s close. Unfortunately an errant stick destroyed it. 

My take is that any road rear derailleur that shifts well on pavement will shift acceptably on dirt as long as you don’t stretch the capacity too far.

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Patrick Moore

Alburquerque, Nuevo Mexico, Etats Unis d'Amerique, Orbis Terrarum

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[Patrick Moore]

Forgot to add that the 7402 shifts the knobby-wheelset 14-28 just fine; I’d bet $15 that it would accommodate a 30 with B screw properly screwed in.

44/28 X 14-28 knobby gearing/44/28 13-25 fat slick gearing.

[Patrick Moore]

One more: Cleland Cycles. Geoffrey Apps, who died last year, was hacking and later building extreme off road bikes — mud-bogging bikes — back in the 1960s. Here is an early — 1979 — production model, the bad photo showing a non-slant-parallelogram rear derailleur. (His first efforts used Sturmey Archer IGHs.)

https://clelandcycles.wordpress.com/

[Drew Saunders]

I have a 9 speed (6402? I think) long cage Ultegra and it handles a 11-28 11-speed cassette in friction mode just fine. I don’t remember the chain wrap, but my 26-42 chainrings don’t stress it. I could probably get it to work with a 11-30. I take that bike on packed dirt all the time.

On Friday, April 4, 2025 at 7:48:23 AM UTC-7 ber...@bernardduhon.com wrote:

[Nick A.]

Ok, well, it's not a "road-oriented" derailleur based on Shimano's opinion, but the "Toyota Camry" (quoting the riv site) of pre-clutch Shimano derailleurs are fabulous. I have around 5k miles on my m592 (still available in the world) and it's been bulletproof, certainly over gravel and rough stuff. Plus, it has the added benefit of colossal capacity. Handles 36t cassette, with 45t capacity.

Nick in Falls Church VA

[Dan]

Am I right in saying that, for a friction-shifted bike, it doesn't matter? As long as the derailleur has the capacity you're after, it should be good to go? If your chain hits the stays over bumps, just wrap it :P

[Shannon Menkveld]

That they are. 

Over on the Classic & Vintage BikeForum, there was a thread about which rear derailleur you would pick if you could only pick one. Given the parameters that this would be the derailleur that had to go on every bike you owned or would ever own, I picked the weird blue pointy 9 speed Deore LX. Light enough, easily findable, cheap, kinda neat looking, they shift better than I do, and they're about as reliable as a shovel.

--Shannon